Ex Machina
by Tonzura123
Summary: England, 1890. The world powers are struggling for dominance. A family is struggling for normalcy. And when Lucille Pevensie shows off her new airship, she and her siblings are dragged into the center of an ancient war. Steampunk!Narnia. AU. Violence.
1. The White Goddess

**EX MACHINA**

**Chapter One: The White Goddess**

**by Tonzura123**

**Rating:** T for violence

**Summary:** Lucille Pevensie shows off her new air-ship and ends up pulling her family in the middle of an ancient war.

**Author's Notes**: Big THANK YOU to all the mods and to Autumnia, because I've always wanted an excuse to write steampunk. I hope you won't mind that the first thing that came into mind was "steampunk air battle." Originally published for the 2013 Narnia Fanfiction Exchange.

In other news, the story is definitely AU, set somewhere in the late 1800's. The Great War is a couple decades early, and is mostly fought in the grungy European skies. The Pevensies have been aged up- Peter has already seen battle, Susan is the family matriarch, and Edmund actively protests the war with Germany while Lucy is left to her own devices. They are twenty-two, twenty-one, nineteen, and seventeen, respectively.

**Original Prompt that we sent you:** Steampunk! Narnia

* * *

**england, 1890**

Lucille Pevensie punched the throttle on the dashboard and swung the wheel to a harsh left, bracing her legs as the entirety of the H.M.S _War Drone_ pitched sideways. Cloudy steam billowed from the hull vents and curled up over the starboard side, smoking the splintering deck and hiding their boots from sight.

Her family wasn't as prepared for the gravitational pull. Edmund was bent over the rail and moaning. Peter was at the bow, knuckles white. And Susan was wrapped around Lucille's waist like a second corset.

"Come on, come on, COME ON."

The engines gunned and rumbled under them. Lucille felt the kick of the larger gears activating, their speed increasing as the warship shot up into the cloudy sky. Steam was screaming out. Lucille gritted her teeth and grinned at the crush of the atmosphere flattening them against the deck.

Then-

-_-CLICK._

Lucille disengaged the engines.

Suddenly weightless, the four youths let out varying screams of distress and surprise. The ship continued up for only a moment, and then, just as their feet left the deck and the mammoth ship began sinking into the ocean of clouds, Lucille released the wings.

Great leather and steel wings, like dull circus tents, snapped down from the mast and caught on the sky. The jerk had the four Pevensies crashing back down. Edmund vomited loudly over the edge and Peter, poor war-addled Peter, let out a whoop.

Lucille laughed. "I _told _you I could make this thing fly."

Susan shakily released her younger sister and wobbled to the mast, sliding down to sit with her back against it. "Excellent, Lu. Now take us back home?"

Lucille's heart dropped. "But we just got into the air!"

"Lucy. We stole a _war ship_. I think this adventure has gone on for long enough!"

"A war ship that _I _fixed!"

"That doesn't matter!"

Lucille tried to glare her sister down, but for all her full lips and smooth skin and tumbling black hair, Susan's blue eyes were more relentless than her younger sister's could ever be. Lucille turned away from her with a stinging in her nose and eyes. She fiddled with the gauges so that Susan wouldn't notice.

"Her Majesty didn't seem to miss this ship very much before," Edmund muttered. He was wiping his mouth and shakily glaring at the wheel in Lucille's hands. "And I doubt she'd miss it much now."

Peter beamed, trailing his fingers through the clouds as he hummed tunelessly. He wasn't wearing a coat, Lucille realized with a pang of regret. They would probably have to go home before long if the cold and the altitude began working its old tricks on his mind. And Susan obviously agreed.

"Look at us," the young woman said. "No coats, no food, no sense of where we're going... Lucille, if we don't turn this around right now, we'll end up being shot out of the-"

"-DOWN!" barked Edmund. Peter immediately fell to the deck, covering his hand in both hands. Lucille thought Edmund was playing an unusually cruel trick on their brother, until Edmund threw himself over both of his sisters and hissed a warning over their shrill protests.

In breathless silence, they followed Edmund's sharp gaze to another ship off of their starboard side.

She was massive. And pure white. Like a goddess hovering in the clouds just above their vessel, she could have easily swallowed a thousand ships just like the _War Drone_ and still made room for more. Twenty boilers covered the sky in steam. Two steel wings the size of ocean liners guarded her flanks with mounted machines and the tiny black specks of automatons running circuits as they checked her over and searched for intruders.

"Easy," Edmund whispered. She felt him shift and saw the glint of his pistol's gold-plated barrel. He slowly pulled back the hammer and drew bead on the leviathan ship, then ceased all movements. To the side, she sensed Peter do the same with the emergency musket.

Desperately, she thought of the control panel and the canon blasters hanging (busted during some ancient fire-fight) from the rusted hull. If only she had fixed them, too! "The engines are still cut. They won't read any heat while we're riding on thermals."

Edmund hushed her but nodded. He caught Peter's eye and Peter powered-down the bulky musket, sliding carefully over to them.

Alarms pierced the air.

Peter froze. His eyes rolled a little in their sockets and his body began to tremble.

"No, Peter, no," Susan whispered urgently. She threw out a hand towards him, but did not move from her spot beside Lucille. "It's all right. We're all right here."

Edmund swiped Peter's musket and let Lucille up. "Hold onto him, Lu."

"Got it." She crawled to Peter, pulling him down and away, closer to the others with a gentle touch. She stroked at the hair by his temples and tried to block his eyes and ears from the constant screech of air-raid sirens.

"They're not- they haven't spotted us? Have they?" Susan whispered. Lucille knew she was thinking of the same thing Edmund was- arrest and imprisonment for being found in a condemned ship, loss of the house and loss of Peter, who would be sent to a Home. And the loss of Lucille, too, she realized with some surprise. She would be considered an orphan, if Susan and Edmund were taken away.

A large BANG struck their ears, and they all screamed, ducking in expectation of sharded metal and fire to break their tiny craft into smithereens. An echoing bang came from the distance. Lucille craned her neck and shouted, "They've just shot another airship!"

It was almost a league away- just a tiny toy on the vast grey sky. Whether it was another pirated ship, or a German Supermarine, Lucille couldn't tell. But the explosion of it's body rocked her, even at this distance. A flurry of debris went up as the missile struck the second ship, and an answering report came in a panicked series of _pop-pop-pop_'s.

The white goddess fired again. Two swift explosions.

Something crashed into their deck- it was half of a large brass cog. They jumped and Edmund pushed Susan towards the wheel. "Get us _out of here!"_

"But- the engines!" Lucille cried. Peter was sobbing in her arms like a child. If they fired up the engines now, their heat signature would give them away and they'd be killed for sure.

"GO!" Edmund bellowed. He seemed to have forgotten all about shooting anything. While he tugged the other two towards the steps that led below deck, Susan began turning the wheel hand-over-fist, rocking the ship harshly to one side. Debris rattled and crash around them. Something hit Lucille over the head and she shrieked, then she fell, and tripped over Peter down the tilting stairs. She heard the door slam shut behind them, and then Edmund yelling and the sharp _sssing_ of his pistol.

Lucille and Peter crumpled together at the base, shivering and pulling on each others arms. The reports of guns were hollowed and muffled below deck. She could feel the ship gliding steadily to the right until the battle was directly behind them. And then, as Peter stilled in her arms over the long minutes, she could imagine she heard nothing of that horrible, monstrous ship.

"Is the war over?" Peter murmured after an hour of silence in the darkness of the _War Drone_'s belly.

She rubbed his head and laughed nervously.

There was a rap above them and the door swung open, revealing rosy twilight. Edmund leaned over the stairs, his face scratched and his new brown vest covered in grease. "All right, everyone?"

"Fine." Lucille rubbed her eyes. Looking around in the sudden light, she realized they sat on a large pile of moth-eaten fur coats. "Susan?"

"Like a true sky-pirate," Edmund grinned. "We're well out of harm's way by now. Somewhere over the Atlantic, I'd expect."

"Help me?" she asked. Her brother came down the steps and lifted Peter to his feet. Together they made it back on deck to survey the damage:

The mast was, amazingly, intact. The wings were spotted with holes that would take hours to patch and days to mend. The back rudder hung crookedly. The creaky old lifeboat was missing. The entire deck was scored with dents and the half-cog was still lodged by the stern.

"It seems a lot worse that it is," said Susan. She was bleeding.

"Susan!" Lucille exclaimed. She rushed forward, hands hovering. "Let someone else take the wheel."

Edmund took it, and Peter and Lucille tore up their own clothes to tie up Susan's arm, which was only scratched by some metal and bled faster due to the great excitement of escape.

"_Now _can we go home?" Susan complained.

"That might be a problem."

They looked to Edmund. He looked at the dashboard.

"Need more fuel," he explained, and pointed at a brass needle that was weakly tipping below "EMPTY."

"Perfect," said Susan. "Wonderful. What a way to end the day."

"I'm sorry," Lucille said in a small voice. "If I hadn't made you all come with me..."

"I'd be getting arrested at an anti-war rally," Edmund snorted. "This is probably the best day of my life."

Susan glared at him. "While I can't agree with either of you on your choices, I don't think Lucille could have known a giant warship would try to blast us out of the sky."

"Jadis," Peter said. "Her name was _Jadis_."

"An ugly name for an ugly ship," Edmund agreed. "Now, if I had designed her, you would be never more excited to be blown up. Her Majesty, Queen Victoria would knight me."

"Wasn't Her Majesty's," Peter insisted. He wiped blood from Susan's neck with a ripped-up part of his sleeve. "It was just _Jadis_."

"An enemy ship? But they've never been that big before!"

"Wasn't Her Majesty's," Peter repeated. He seemed offended.

"Then whose?" Lucille wondered.

PING.

They jerked. A small radio-ship floated off the port. Shaped like bell, the top had a single tiny radio antennae and a little red bulb that pulsed with its signal. Puffs of steam billowed out of the bottom of the bell.

"Um," said Edmund.

"Did that craft just PING _us_?" Susan demanded.

PING.

"Um. Susan," Edmund said a little more insistently. "You know geography."

Disconcerted, both girls turned to look at him. He was gripping the wheel rather tightly, black hair mussed, dark eyes round.

"Yes?"

"Er- Do you know of any islands five hundred miles south-east of England?"

"No?"

Edmund nodded. "Right. So I have gone bonkers and we are not about to crash into that island up there."

Lucille whirled. Ahead of them, floating- actually _floating_- above the blue Atlantic was a large green landmass, miles and miles across. There was a dense section that looked like forest, and a paler slope like fields, and all around it were the whirling figures of autophons: mechanical gryphons made specifically to guard against invaders. Lucy had never seen so many in one place. Actually, she had never seen on in-person in her life; the closest she had come was when she checked out a book of ancient mechanics to help her fix the _War Drone_.

"Pull up!" Susan yelled.

"I can't," Edmund said, warily watching the autophons as he white-knuckled the wheel. "Out of fuel, remember? If we don't land soon, the engines will cut and we don't have strong enough thermals to stay aloft. We'll crash."

PING.

The radio-ship floated down onto the deck, pinging insistently at Peter, who sat on his crossed legs and frowned.

"We're friends," he said. "You don't have to be so rude about it."

"That's it, Pete," Edmund encouraged from the wheel. "Tell the nice little radio that we're nice, good English men and women who come in peace."

"All right," Peter said. "But I don't think he cares who we are, as long as we park along the river."

"There's no-"

"-River." Lucy pointed at the blue stream flowing off the side of the floating island and into the ocean.

"Ah." Edmund made a minute correction with the wheel and laughed exasperatedly. "Anything else your little friend can tell us, Peter?"

Peter looked up at them and grinned widely. He settled the musket back across his back and rolled onto his stomach, watching the natural clouds beyond the floating island.

"He says, 'welcome to Narnia.'"


	2. The Dam Automaton Has a Screw Loose

**EX MACHINA**

**by Tonzura123**

**Chapter Two: The Dam Automaton Has a Screw Loose***

***A/N: I am definitely stealing this joke from Mr. Rick Riordan's ****_Percy Jackson _****series. Please no sue.**

* * *

"I dunno if I like Narnia very much," Edmund said. "All this green weirds me out."

He was joking. Or, Lucille admitted, she hoped he was joking. He wasn't smiling, but that didn't mean anything. Edmund liked to say ridiculous things with a straight face all the time. To say he didn't like _this place_...Well. That was about as ridiculous as it got.

Edmund had let Lucille guide the _War Drone _down onto a soft mossy patch by the glistening river. Then Susan led Peter down the ramp while Edmund and Lucille brought up the rear. The boys had their guns out again, and the radio-ship (which Peter had started calling Robbin after Edmund commented that it was robbing him of his patience) floated along at their sides. Robbin was much less irate now that they had landed and the ship had been powered down. And without the roar of the engines, the sounds of birds and the winds in the trees were all much louder.

Lucille set foot on that weird green and laughed. She had had some underlying expectation that she would feel metal or fall through a hologram. Instead, soft grass and warm earth bounced under her boots. She jumped a little, relishing the feeling of ground in the middle of the sky.

"How are we floating?" she laughed. "It doesn't make any sense!"

Peter laughed too and launched himself down a smallish hill, rolling all the way down. Edmund yelped and tried to run after him, but ended up falling on his face and tumbling much less coordinately after him. Above their heads, Robbin glided smoothly after, _pinging _cheerfully.

"It's impossible," Susan admitted. She was the only one not tumbling or rolling or gliding or laughing. In fact, she was positively grim.

"What's the matter?" Lucille wondered. Peter and Edmund paused their climb up the hill to look from girl to girl.

Susan bit her lip. "Well, Lucille, to be honest, I've already said most of it-"

"-stress, stress, stress-" Edmund muttered to Peter.

"-But I'll say it again. We have no fuel. I don't think Narnia has the kind we need for our ship. There's no way down. I really don't see how we'll get back home at all."

"And that's a bad thing?" Edmund wondered. Peter nodded vigorously.

"The air is cleaner here than it is in England," Lucille wheedled. "And I bet those trees have some fruit on them. We can spend today worrying about today and tomorrow about tomorrow."

"What about the autophons?" Susan asked pointedly, scanning the clear skies for a hint of threat. "They wouldn't just let anyone stay-"

PING-PING

"We're safe," Peter grinned broadly, patting Robbin on the bell.

Susan's face was pinched. "Well..."

Edmund went to her and threw a long arm over her shoulders, his cheek pressed to hers as he waved his other hand excitedly in front of them. "Think of it, Su; camping under the stars like when we were kids. We can pile up those furs from below deck for beds. The air is so warm we won't have to worry about freezing. Just fresh air and the sounds of songbirds. It'll be like a day in the country."

Susan closed her eyes, leaning a little against her younger brother.

"Well?"

Slowly, she nodded once.

"Brilliant!" Peter threw up his arms and jumped on Edmund's back, which buckled alarmingly considering how much bigger Peter was than Edmund. "No school! SNOW DAY!"

Edmund sputtered and wobbled as Peter "yah'ed" him on, and the boys and Robbin went back to running in aimless circles. The world's shortest Idiot Parade.

They had left to see Lucille's great surprise about mid-morning, and by the time they landed in Narnia, it was late afternoon. The sun was breaking through the clouds and dappling the grass for miles. A strong breeze lifted up from the ocean, stirring the grass and teasing their hair around their faces. They set to exploring, but wordlessly agreed to stay close to the ship. If anything, it could shield them from a small barrage of bullets. _Jadis _was still something that, while serious, the Pevensies wanted very much to forget about.

Lucille ran to the river, with Susan in tow. The water was the clearest she had ever seen. She could look right to the bottom. But at one part, a little ways down, the water gushed harshly around a large mass of tree roots, like a natural dam. They had, according to Edmund, appeared to have grown over a large rock.

"It must have happened little by little over the years," he added. "That tree looks about a hundred years old."

It turned out that the trees had a fruit on them, but it wasn't any fruit they had seen before. It was sort of star-shaped and tart, but delicious. They all ate until their stomachs were full, and then returned to the ship and started hauling mounds of old furs to a shaded spot below the star-fruit trees.

By the time they had made up their beds and ate another round of fruit, the sun was getting very low on the horizon, and so they all curled up together on the fur pile for a nap. Edmund and Susan lie on the outside with their guns, while Lucille was wrapped up in Peter's broad arms in the middle.

Robbin hovered gently over them, roosting from time to time in the branches. Other times pinging so softy that it sounded like a song.

Lucille fell asleep to the half-imagined notes and dreamed of a fog walking on cat feet towards her, and it whispered in a rumble like soundless thunder. A rhyme. But before she could make sense of it, her eyes opened and she realized it was because Susan was saying-

"-Edmund. Are you awake?"

Lucille woke to darkness and with the warmth of Peter covering her left side. She couldn't see anything (the evening had come and gone already) but she heard Edmund's sound of assent from her right. His long leg rested lightly against her spine. He must have been sitting on-guard, with his back against the tree.

Susan's voice came again from the dark, barely audible over Peter's soft snoring in Lucille's ear. "Were you really going to be arrested today?"

"That's what I said isn't it?"

"I thought you were joking."

"No," said Edmund. "I wasn't joking."

They were silent for a moment.

Then, "I lost my job at the factory," Susan said softly.

"I _thought _it was a little easy to get you on that ship," Edmund said with false cheer. "Today was the first time you never seemed worried about being on time. What happened?"

"They just said I wasn't quick enough with the needle. They lost more money on me than they earned. They wanted to find someone with healthier hands."

"It's their bloody fault you ever got arthritis at your age," Edmund muttered.

"And," said Susan hesitantly, "Mrs. Macready has increased our rent again."

Edmund laughed sardonically. "That's nothing. I found out they no longer make Peter's prescription."

"A rabbit ate our vegetable garden, too."

"I'll be kicked out of Uni if I get into another fight."

"Lucille's tuition is almost due."

"I might have killed a guard during the last protest."

"_Edmund."_

"Joking. Actually and truly joking this time, Su. Sorry."

Lucille stared at nothing, willing her breathing to keep steady against Edmund's knee. It wasn't easy. She had known her family had made sacrifices to keep together, but she'd never heard it all laid out so bluntly. It suddenly occurred to her that Susan and Edmund compared their days like this routinely, and that hurt even more.

Susan breached the topic again. "Oh, Edmund, what are we going to do?"

"We're going to sit here until morning and try to find a way back to England," he replied. "And if we can't find a way back to England, well they're a bunch of rotters anyway and I shan't miss them."

"You can't be serious."

"Why not?" Edmund asked. Lucille's stomach clenched at the cold venom snaking its way through his voice.

"Because," insisted Susan, "it's our _home_."

"What has England ever done for us? Relieve us of our loved ones? First Father, then Mother. And now they want us. They want you to go to a poor house and Lucille to end up in a cramped orphanage with nothing to eat and no one to watch over her. And they'll check Peter to an institution where they'll jab him and medicate him to the gills and toss me into the clink so that I can wait to be shot-"

"...Edmund, none of that is going to happen."

"..."

"Edmund."

Lucille's back was cold. She turned on her side, jostling Peter so that he sat up quickly, barking, "Four o'clock Private Hastings; you are relieved!"

"Edmund," Susan said again. Lucille felt her sister's hand fly out across Peter and touch her arm. "Is he all right?"

"I dunno." Lucille patted the furs beside her, which were still warm and indented in the shape of her brother's body. Her hand paused as it fell on the cold metal of his gold pistol. "_Ed?"_

Robbin powered up with a mechanical _whirr_ and PING'ed, puffing as he floated up the trunk of the star fruit tree. The red bulb of his top cast a dull light around them, and Lucille, breath catching in her throat, was the first to see Edmund's dark head dangling high above them.

She tried to scream. It didn't really come out.

Edmund's eyes met hers.

"Now everyone... stay calm," he said in a low tone. She could barely hear the warble in it. "Everything is fine. However. It has come to my attention that I am being held upside-down by something much, _much _larger than us and it would be jolly brilliant if no one panics while I'm up here."

"Or while we're down here," Lucille added breathlessly.

Lights flooded down from above.

Susan really _did _scream.

Edmund was starkly outlined by two enormous circles of high-beam lights. Holding onto his calf was a giant mechanical arm, a little shorter than a human-automaton, although this was balanced on two hind legs. From its face hung two bits of metal that looked a little like buck teeth- solar panels, and down its back hundreds more were welded to the frame, draping down in a gentle sloping tail made of steel. A rudder, Lucille realized.

Another horrible realization struck her as she looked at the ropy roots mantled around its mighty limbs; that dam of roots in the river hadn't grown over a rock after all. They had grown over this- this marine-based automaton.

So, what was it doing on land? Or floating land, at that?

"It's..." she began cautiously, "Um. What is it?"

Peter pointed to the serialization on its chest, beaming. "It's a beaver!"

This was an excellent assumption, really. The serialization actually read, "-B- Ver No.1" where some of the letters and numbers were scratched off from age. The first version of its class.

And it did sort of look like a beaver, Lucille supposed.

"IDENTIFY," said BVER No.1.

The sound was so loud, they had to clap their hands over their ears. Edmund, who was directly by the speaker, was yelling, "Ow, ow, ow!"

"Peter Pevensie, nice to meet you." Peter was sourly tapping on his ears. One ear, then the other.

Lucille put one hand on his elbow, but she wasn't sure if it was for his benefit or hers.

The BVER No. 1 bent woodenly at the middle like it was bowing, and stiffly released Edmund's leg. Susan screamed again. He dropped ten feet onto the furs and stayed there, unharmed but shaken.

"IDENTITY: RECOGNIZED. WELCOME TO NARNIA, PETER PEVENSIE. HOW MAY I SERVE YOU?"

"Oh god," Susan said.

"Lights and volume DOWN!" yowled Peter, still holding his ears.

"Request compliant," said BVER No. 1 at a much more pleasant decibel as they blinked in the soft lighting of their camp. "Scanners register three unidentified entities. Delete or Save?" Its long rudder arched over its head like a scorpion tail, and an ominous, fiery hum began to build in its gut.

"Save!" Peter yelled. "Susan, Edmund, Lucille." He pointed to each of them as he named them, and the lights of the automaton's eyes blinked with each name. The tail silenced and fell back against the earth with a terrible _thwack!_

"Identities saved: Susan, Edmund, Lucille. Party registry completed. Welcome to Narnia, Susan, Edmund, AND Lucille. How may I serve you?"

Stunned, they all stared at Peter, who was dully humming. He had already forgotten where he was.

Edmund cautiously climbed to his feet, one wary eye on the BVER. "Susan..."

Susan's lips were pursed so tightly, they had turned white around the edges. Lucille looked between the two of them, waiting to understand whatever they had already figured out.

"What?" she asked. "What is it?"

"Nothing, Lu," Susan said, calmly. "It's nothing."

Anger warmed Lucille's cheeks. "Stop doing that! I'm not a kid anymore- Let me help!"

Her sane brother and grim sister shared a glance. Edmund sighed.

"What kind of fuel does the _War Drone _need?" he asked.

A definite change of subject, but Lucille was so glad of an actual breach into any level of their trust, that she immediately replied. "Eccalade makes the best steam. It's a little dated, but the boiler's so ancient, I shouldn't wonder if it used to run off of coal."

"Automaton," Edmund said, "Any eccalade on the island?"

"Request non-compliant. Subject ECCALADE unknown."

"Well bother it all, I didn't exactly bring a thesaurus along with me," Edmund remarked. "What was the scientific...? Oh. How about triptogen?"

"Request non-compliant. Subject TRIPTOGEN unknown."

"Sorry, Lu." He shrugged. "What other fuels would work with our ship?"

Lucille was about to reply when the BVER's eyes lit up the night. They flashed once over the ship, then blinked back into their muted state. There was a distinct _clunk _from within its metallic shell.

Then, suddenly: "IDENTITY: RECOGNIZED. SPLENDOUR HYALINE. SPLENDOUR HYALINE. SPLENDOUR HYALINE-"

"What the DEVIL is a splendour hiya-magummy?" Edmund demanded. "The blasted beaver has a screw loose!"

They all covered up their ears, as the BVER went on blaring those bizarre words across the island for a full minute until they lost all possible meaning. Finally, after the fiftieth repetition, there was another _clunk _and it silenced again.

"Of all the stupid-" Susan began.

"Shhh!" hissed Lucy. "_Listen_."

It began, low on the night air and riding through the soft mutterings of their oldest brother and through the soft song of Robbin. Like the blaring siren of the BVER, it repeated itself, but without alarm. And as they listened, and the words became steadily clearer, they realized Peter was speaking with these two machines, matching them word for word:

"_When Adam's flesh and Adam's bone_

_Sits at Cair Paravel in throne,_

_The evil time will be over and done_

_When Adam's flesh and Adam's bone_

_Sits at Cair Paravel in throne,_

_The evil time will be over and done_

_When Adam's flesh and Adam's bone_

_Sit's at Cair Paravel..."_

It was, Lucille realized, the same poem from her dream.


End file.
